Why a Nashville CEO is making Tennessee's diminishing state game bird his personal cause

Bob Doochin is trying to preserve one of the state birds, the Northern bobwhite quail, in the wild.
Larry McCormack, lmccormack@tennessean.com

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Bob Doochin, the owner and chief executive officer of American Paper & Twine, has gone to great lengths to help preserve one of the state birds, the Northern bobwhite quail, in the wild.(Photo: Larry McCormack / The Tennessean)Buy Photo

He’s not alone, but he's unique in that he has made the problem a personal cause.

"I started quail hunting 50 years ago," he said in a recent interview from his office. "I was drawn to the sport because of my love of the bird dogs, but over time I came to appreciate the beauty of this little bird. I fell in love with the quail."

Doochin, 77, has spared little expense in his efforts to ward off the bobwhite quail's apparent impending doom.

He’s called experts and governors, preservationists and wildlife resource officers. He’s even courted many for the cause on long excursions to places like Albany, Georgia, where a genteel market for quail hunting has led to a local cultivation of the wild bird.

But most of Doochin’s pleas have not received much attention.

He's gotten little more than a state resolution drawing attention to the bird's plight.

This has not kept the owner and chief executive officer of American Paper & Twine, a national paper and office supply company, from dropping what some might consider a fortune trying to save the bobwhite quail.

He's acquired more than 1,000 acres in Dickson County, spent over half a million dollars in scattered milo, a type of grain derived from sorghum, thousands more on live trapping and removing predators. In his efforts, he's developed a formula based on supplemental feeding and predator control he hopes can potentially reverse the statistics.

“What we are dealing with here is a massive catastrophe the likes of which befell the carrier pigeon,” Doochin said of the birds once abundant in North America and known for their ability to deliver messages across long distances. “This is a major story. I know I can’t do this alone.”

The fate of the carrier pigeon

Doochin’s analogy is a textbook lesson burned into the memory of many conservationists.

The carrier pigeon, also known as the passenger or messenger pigeon, was once the most abundant bird in North America.

Stories were told in the 19th century of the birds traveling in flocks of millions, of migrations that took hours to pass and that resembled dark, thunderous clouds moving through the sky.

But by September 1914, the last known carrier pigeon, named Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoo. Her death, and the extinction of the carrier pigeon, reawakened the country’s sensitivities to man-driven extinction, in this case mostly by overhunting.

A hundred years later, the North American Bird Conservation Initiative, in connection with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, released a State of the Birds report on the centennial anniversary of Martha’s death. The report drew on the lessons of the carrier pigeon and outlined bird populations in decline.

The Northern bobwhite quail, designated Tennessee’s official game bird in 1988, was included on the list.

From 1966 to 2014, the bird’s population declined by an estimated 85 percent, according to the study.

In the past, even with thousands of Tennessee hunters, the bird's populations were strong.

"The quail population in Tennessee has been in a steady decline since the early ‘80s," said Wes Winton, a Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency game birds manager. "It’s really taken a nosedive. We attribute most of that to loss of suitable habitat."

The bobwhite quail

The northern bobwhite quail is Tennessee's official game bird.(Photo: Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency)

A small ground-dwelling bird native to the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean, the Northern bobwhite quail finds its home in brushy thickets.

It’s a small, regal-looking bird with a brown, black and white speckled plumage. Males have a white throat and more pronounced coloration than females in order to attract a mate.

At about 6 ounces, about an ounce larger than a dove, the bird has a chunky base and the tapered top of most quail, giving it the appearance of a feathered bowling pin.

Although its coloration is adapted to thorny brush and shrubbery, without such cover, the birds are often prey for a number of predators.

"In general, the quail has been affected by clean farming practices," Winton said. "Farms that farm commercially are farming fence row to fence row, clearing out the brush and shrubbery farmers used to leave that was great for the quail.

"Today, landowners like to have that property manicured and well-kept," he said. "The weekend bush hog hobby farmer collectively forms as big of an impact as the large-scale farmer."

Meanwhile, Doochin has his own suspicions.

"The wild quail has been the victim of a false narrative," he said earlier this month while driving across his farm. "The bob quail isn't that picky about where he calls home."

Doochin believes the decrease in hunting and trapping of the quail's predators has played a greater role over loss of habitat than many wildlife officials want to acknowledge.

Doochin believes he’s cultivated a wild quail population on his farm of about 40 to 50 quail coveys, or small flocks usually of about 10 birds. His goal is to get the wild population on his farm to about 500.

Doochin believes that if his methods were reproduced across the state this would lessen the bird's population decline.

But Winton believes that while Doochin could be partially right, the efforts, and money, required to duplicate the efforts make it less effective than giving the bird more places to hide.

"I’ve been doing this almost 20 years, and it used to be a fairly common occurrence to catch somebody trapping; now it is rare," he said. "There's no doubt there has been an increase in (predators).

"But to go after predators as the number one solution is a very localized solution to a large-scale problem," he said. "But it's safe to say the current decline can't continue. It’s a very negative slope there that's eventually going to hit zero if something doesn't change."